Strength Finder: How Founder, CEO Turned Illness Into Powerful Global Effort To Impact Lives

Donna Cryer, founder, president and CEO of Global Liver Institute.

Donna Cryer’s mother wanted a white picket fence surrounding an idyllic space for her children to grow up in Waterbury, Conn. 

“We did indeed have a white picket fence,” says Cryer, founder, president and CEO of the Global Liver Institute, whose parents moved to Connecticut during the late 1960s when they were recruited as African American schoolteachers for local public schools.  

Following one week as a student in the local public school, where Cryer says she was “intellectually precocious,” she moved to private school where she thrived.

After reading Helen Keller’s autobiography, “The Story of My Life,” Cryer set her sights at an early age on attending Radcliffe College as Keller did, and also on becoming a lawyer because she absolutely loved watching “Perry Mason” on TV.

She did both.

“After reading Helen Keller’s autobiography, “The Story of My Life,” @DCPatient set her sights at an early age on attending Radcliffe College as Keller did, and also on becoming a lawyer because she absolutely loved watching “Perry Mason” on TV. She did both. ”

“It made perfect sense to me,” says Cryer, who in 2021 received both the Global Genes RARE Champions of Hope Founders and the American Association for the Study of the Liver Distinguished Advocacy Service awards. 

“I never wanted to be a defense attorney, but I always wanted to be a prosecutor,” says Cryer, who has raised more than $10 million for liver health initiatives and became a lawyer after earning an undergraduate degree from Radcliffe/Harvard University and a juris doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center.

““I never wanted to be a defense attorney, but I always wanted to be a prosecutor,” says @DCPatient, who has raised more than $10 million for liver health initiatives and became a lawyer after a juris doctorate from @GeorgetownLaw. #womenleaders”

It was her health that delivered a detour—and ultimately a strong path—to her professional and personal mission.

Diagnosed at 13 with inflammatory bowel disease that later led to primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a chronic liver disease caused by progressive inflammation and scarring of the bile ducts of the liver, and ultimately to her liver transplant, Cryer turned her life experience, education and advocacy into a movement to change global public health.

“Diagnosed at 13 with inflammatory bowel disease that later led to primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), Donna Cryer @DCPatient, founder, president and CEO of @GlobalLiver turned her life experience, education and advocacy into a movement to change global #public #health.”

As April is Donate Life Month and Minority Health Month, Cryer is making it her mission to launch the Liver Health is Public Health initiative to change the conversation and actions around liver health and to shift the attention from end stage to prevention.

“At this point now I’ve lived more of my life as a patient, than not. This is less traumatic than it is for people who all through their life are healthy,” says Cryer, who has convened more than 200 global organizations to collaborate with the GLI Councils and Liver Action Network. “I don’t have another identity as a non-patient, so it’s not as scary.”

Graduating from Harvard in 1992, with her Perry Mason intention in tow, Cryer began Georgetown University Law Center, and “unlike people whose parents made them go, I wanted to go to law school, practice law, be a judge. The first time I took the train to D.C. and I saw the Capitol, it got to me, there was no place else.”

Complications from her liver disease had her hospitalized the summer after her first year of law school and in September 1994, she had her liver transplant. She took a year off school and went back to earn her law degree beginning in January 1995, graduating in 1997 after serving as Student Bar Association president.   

“For @DCPatient it was her health that delivered a detour—and ultimately a strong path—to her professional and personal mission. #womenleaders #LiverHealth”

“It never occurred to me that I would die,” Cryer says. “My path had always been my path.”

After graduating, Cryer worked at the Department of Justice and then at United Network for Organ Sharing as a patient affairs specialist from 1996 to 2000. After serving as associate director at Advisory Board Company, a consultant at VoxMedica, then a managing director in program development at Association of Community Cancer Centers, Cryer joined Hill & Knowlton as a senior account supervisor 2002 to 2004.

“I look back on that and it was a little like Little Red Hen because I would learn it, do it, write it, then run it,” says Cryer, who has been named by Miliken Institute at George Washington University School of Public Health as one of the Top Blacks in Healthcare. “It gave me all the tools for my later consulting work.”

According to a National Institutes of Health 2021 study, women leading global health initiatives is indeed a rarity.

“While women comprise 70% of the health workforce, they remain the minority in global health leadership, filling only 25% of senior and 5% of top health organization positions,” according to the National Library of Medicine.  

The study reports, “In comparison to men, women in leadership positions are more likely to directly respond to the concerns of the community, to allocate funds toward education, health, and nutrition, to prioritize the needs of women, children, and marginalized groups, and to increase research on women’s health issues.”

For Cryer, she is cognizant that her leadership—particularly since it intersects personally with her advocacy as a patient—is very unusual.

“For @DCPatient, she is cognizant that her #leadership—particularly since it intersects personally with her #advocacy as a patient—is very unusual. #LiverHealth”

A shift to vice president at Matthews Media Group in 2004 led to an advisory position at Spirit Health Group. In 2005, while attending a national conference, Cryer met Dr. Dennis Cryer, a pediatric geneticist; they married six months later.

She joined CryerHealth that year as founder and chief executive officer for the healthcare consulting firm providing strategic counsel to biopharmaceutical companies, patient advocacy groups and technology firms working on patient engagement. She led that organization until 2014 and is no longer consulting there.

In 2014, Cryer founded the Global Liver Institute where her husband now serves on the board for the institute that is the only patient-driven liver health nonprofit in the U.S. and Europe.

“For writers, it is ‘write what you know.’ In advocacy it is addressing the problems that most plagued you. The impetus behind the Global Liver Institute is to work so that every patient has the best experience.” She adds, “It goes wrong for so many people; they are not diagnosed early enough, or connected to the right treatment, or access to medications they need.”

““The impetus behind the @GlobalLiver is to work so that every patient has the best experience.” @DCPatient adds, “It goes wrong for so many people; they are not diagnosed early enough, or connected to the right treatment, or access to medications they need.” #LiverHealth”

With two million deaths per year globally from liver disease, half a billion people across the globe live with liver diseases. One in four people are impacted by nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and one in five of those people will develop more advanced liver conditions. More than 75 million people are at risk for alcohol related diseases. Viral hepatitis and C virus impact more than 360 million people worldwide.

As a globally recognized expert on transplants and a consultant for the Hollywood Health and Society institute, Cryer was a script consultant for the 2002 movie, “John Q,” starring Denzel Washington, as a father who takes a hospital emergency room hostage so he son can have a heart transplant.

“I changed the blood type in the script,” Cryer says.

“As April is #DonateLifeMonth and Minority Health Month, @DCPatient is making it her mission to launch the #LiverHealth is #PublicHealth initiative to change the conversation and actions around liver health and to shift the attention from end stage to prevention. ”

Named one of the Top 10 Patients Who Make an Impact by Health 2.0 and one of PharmaVoice’s 100 Most Inspiring People, Cryer serves on the boards of directors for the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, Sibley Memorial Hospital/Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Innovation and Value Initiative and the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative. She is the first patient to serve on the American Board of Internal Medicine Gastroenterology Specialty Board and was one of the founding members of the AASLD Patient Advisory Committee.

 “We are strength finders,” Cryer says of her organization’s team and affiliates. “The team and the organization build on their strengths—community assets, not community deficits.”

““We are strength finders,” @DCPatient says of her organization’s @GlobalLiver team and affiliates. “The team and the organization build on their strengths—community assets, not community deficits.” #LiverHealth”

She adds, “I have to be mindful of how I can achieve high levels and high standards, and lean into the strengths, rather than the weaknesses my body has. I have to optimize that in myself, in others and that gives me a lot of energy, hope and power. And that creates power in other people.”